


Lies the Seed

by LadySwillmart



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Bibliographic Farrago, CidNero Week 2020, Gen, Hospital Pudding, The Sound of a Ruined Drafting Pencil, The kind of story that makes Nothing Happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:40:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySwillmart/pseuds/LadySwillmart
Summary: This is my entry for CidNero Week 2020 in which Cid regrets several things, one of which was waiting so long to visit Nero at the hospital (a regret Nero seems determined to reverse). A rather lonely piece I think, so it fits with Day 6's theme. This happens between Sigmascape and Alphascape (so, maybe around patch 4.3), but before the beginning of Alphascape. I say "happens" as if anything happens in it at all, but this is a lie, sorry. As for the shippiness of it, I'd say it's no more or less ambiguous than the writing of the game itself.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Lies the Seed

_**I say love, it is a flower, and you its only seed.** _

**\- Amanda McBroom, The Rose**

* * *

_How about Regret?_ Perhaps a mild, middling sort of regret, of the variety one senses while treading the depths of a cold, heavy puddle in canvas plimsolls.

 _I regret not coming to see you sooner, Nero._ Cid tested the word in the sentence he shaped and rehearsed as he walked across town, from his workshop’s more discreet side exit, past the regiments of shop girls running Rowena’s multitudinous markets, through reminders living and dead of wars past and present, over the landmark bridge forming a double arc over the river Velodyna, towards the pismire’s complex that Rhalgr’s Reach designated as the town hospital.

_I regret not coming to see you more often._

_I regret not even bringing you so much as a card._

Nobody would _blame_ him for that, right? Least of all Nero—Cid reassured himself the way the growing algid sensation seeping into his socks did not. He and only he knew the full extent of Nero’s injuries and the extraordinary measures required to save his life. Only he had witnessed the process and the aftermath, his childhood friend shorn bald like a grub, clamped to the table like a plank in a vise, head split open like a ripe summer melon, those fiery blue eyes like glass beads, wide, bright, unblinking, focused fast to an idol, his oldest and dearest friend standing by his side, gripping his hand as if to let go would effect a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Cid sometimes recalled those eyes whenever he closed his own, phosphenes scintillating against the black velvet of his inner peace. He had seen enough.

_Honestly Nero, I regret not coming to see you at all._

He stood now in the hospital’s convalescent corridor, smelling faintly of iodine and old laundry, stone walls smoothed as if hewn eons ago by some massive boring insect. A hive of some sort, with individual chambers for each patient. Waxy curtains for privacy, no doors. Cid knew he now stood abaft the one where he last left his friend. Regret stayed his hand.

The anticipation of something worse moved it.

In a single sweep, Cid drew back the curtain, clearing his throat.

“Nero, I regret not coming to see—oh _seven Hells_.”

He knew he would be walking into a mess, but had failed to anticipate a literal perplexity of papers, blueprints, textbooks, sketches, swatches, the odd greeting card or two. Regular movement from the bed to the door made for a usable path, but Cid’s second step cracked ominously. He knew the sound of a ruined drafting pencil when he heard it.

Alpha sat snug atop the foot of the bed, keenly vying for entry into Nero’s dessert for that evening (a foil-sealed cup of pudding the color and consistency of carpenter’s glue). As for the man of the hour, he appeared to be napping, posed in a slumber Cid would describe as “not unlike that of an overeager swift who has just discovered windows”. His arms crimped close to his body, mouth slightly agape. The bandage wrapped around his forehead framed a crown of new and fluffy blond hair, now just long enough to veil the remaining stitches and scabs. His eyes, heavy and dark about the lids.

“Nero, I—” Cid gingerly reached for the bedside chair and almost completed the landing until his bottom squeaked plaintively; the culprit was a stuffed yellow chocobo chick, bearing in its leatherette beak a heart with the words “GET WELL SOON” embroidered in an embarrassingly frilly script.

The toy squeaked again when it bounced against the floor. Alpha kweh’d in response, but refused to give up on his own delicious quarry.

“Godsdammit, Nero, I—Nero?”

So far Nero’s reception was not promising. Cid knew the man could be a bit prickly when disturbed, but surely a visiting guest warranted something that could pass for a proper hello.

“Nero, I need to talk to you,” he continued, gently grasping the patient’s left shoulder; that drab wincey nightshirt sleeve felt exactly how it looked.

“Kweh?” Alpha gamely took Nero’s right cuff into his beak and tugged.

“That is to say, I’d _like_ to talk to you. I know it’s been some time.”

“Kweh?”

“Nero, are you listening to me?”

“Kwe-kweh?”

“Are you awake?”

“Kwe-kweh…”

“Are you alive?”

“Kwe-kwe-kweh…”

Finally, the jaws of life. Nero greeted them with something between a snort and a moan, and through mere slits of eyes he fumbled for the container of pudding and punctured it duly with his pointer finger.

“Alpha, you’ve become addicted to that stuff,” he muttered as he passed it off to the chocobo.

“Kweh!”

“You’ll rot your teeth out.”

“Eh? Alpha doesn’t have any teeth,” said Cid.

“Because he eats too much sugar.” Nero waved his hand, dismissively. “Hello, Garlond. To what do I owe this exceptionally rare pleasure.”

Cid paused. He could feel a surge of something familiar, boiling his nerves, threatening to evaporate the tender emotion that led him here. _Good old…_

“Nero, I know it’s been a while, I just wanted to talk to you, alright?”

Nero continued to groan as he shifted, one joint at a time, towards a position more amenable for what was unfortunately sounding more and more like a _conversation_. “Am I in trouble?”

“Err—no.”

“What a shame.”

“Kweh!” A well-sated Alpha snuggled in closer, nestling his beak beneath Nero’s right hand. Demanding silently.

“Why would you be in trouble? You’ve been bedridden for the past several weeks.”

“Ah ah, Garlond,” Nero weakly waggled a finger. “I _can_ get up and use the toilet now, as per my last postcard, which you undoubtedly read and treasured forever in a bin somewhere. Believe me, there is plenty of trouble to be had from here to the other end of the hallway.”

This was not how the dialogue had unfurled when Cid first imagined it, and now the narrative throughline was starting to resemble one of the many elaborate sketches sloughed about the room like bark off a birch tree in the summer heat.

“The nurses must adore you, you can barely move and you already trashed the place. What is all of this, anyway?” he asked, peeling one schematic off the hospital-issue woolen quilt.

“My work, Garlond. I’ve still got work to do, you know. I am under contract.”

“Surely Jessie would understand if you gave it a rest. I know I would. Pretty sure having a godsdamned hole drilled into your skull counts for sick leave,” he ventured. “If not, I can always amend the company playbook.”

Nero shrugged. “Don’t bother. I enjoy being productive. I work hard.”

“So do washing machines.”

“I work hard,” he reiterated, triumphantly, “therefore I am.”

“How very Garlean of you.”

“Well I can’t hardly sit around and rot in a bed all day, can I? By myself?” Nero sighed. “Yes, I can walk to the toilet now but how many times can one march or crawl or _gobbue-doo-dah_ down the same abysmal hallway until the novelty wears off? There’s one window in here and they’ve covered it with wax paper so I can’t even tell just how much time I’ll never get back.”

“Read a book.”

“There’s one book in the hospital library, Betty Nurse Goes to Work. It mocks me.”

“So what are all of these?” Cid gestured to Nero’s accumulated bibliographic farrago, spread about the place at nobody’s convenience.

“Oh! Those.” Nero allowed a watery chuckle. “Jessie brought those in for me. Oh, you know, Ironworks material standards, schematic guides, current trade rules, armoring parameters. _Ampersand C_.”

Cid crooked an eyebrow. “Whatever she commissioned you to make, it sounds dangerously close to legitimate.”

“You’ll find out. Assuming I don’t croak before I finish it,” Nero lamented in advance. He was very good at this. “Then you will probably find out about it anyway and become so overcome with regret of what should’ve been—”

“Regret!” cried Cid. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Regret? And not my gorgeous shirt?”

“Kweh?”

“Shh.” Nero resumed stroking Alpha’s beak.

“Yes, regret. I, uh, I don’t know how else to say this, Nero.” Cid shifted in his chair, which appeared to be upholstered with the same fabric as the hospital-issue quilt and Nero’s nightshirt. It would leave a mark in the morning.

“Say what…?”

“I suppose that what I really regret is that I never even tried to get to know you better back then,” he continued, carefully. “Back when we were kids, before we went our separate ways.”

“Before Meteor, you mean.”

Cid nodded. “Yes, that too.”

Nero faltered against his pillow and sputtered like a deflating balloon.

“I know this is all a bit—”

“—apropos of nothing?”

“Not nothing,” said Cid. “You almost died, Nero. I watched you as you almost died. I was gripping your hand and watching your eyes pop out of your skull and you almost died, right there, right in front of me. Now if you think I’ve been avoiding you this whole time because I don’t care, you’re wrong. In truth, I was too afraid to face you again. Afraid I’d come back in here and find some vegetable, lost forever.”

“Oh.” Nero basked in a disquieting silence. “Understandable. I too live with the constant fear of encountering a stray carrot under the bed.”

“I’m being serious, please,” said Cid, going so far as to clasp his hands together. “Please try to understand, just once.”

Nero ticked his tongue, thoughtfully. “I truly am sorry that my almost dying was such an upsetting thing for you, Garlond. I’ll try to be more mindful of that next time.”

“Dammit, Nero! That’s not…” Anguish that could not be contained found an outlet against a bedside table, via the crux of Cid’s palm. This would also leave a mark in the morning.

“Well, what do you want me to say? _Better luck next time_ , eh?”

“Why are you like this? Always some quip, some comeback.”

“It’s what I do, Garlond,” Nero returned the volley without effort. “It’s who I am.”

“Oh, right, _what you do_.” The man seethed. “You’re always so godsdamned willing to prattle on and on about everything you do and everything you’ve done and everything you hope to do before you croak.”

“And that bothers you, now,” Nero mused, flatly. By now he’d turned his head away, to fix his beady blue gaze on a wax paper window with nothing to show him but a muted yellow glow.

“Yes! Yes, it does. Because despite that, despite all that, nobody knows a godsdamned thing about who you are. And, alright, if you want to keep that man buried under his papers and schematics and inventions and accomplishments and bullshite, and if you’d rather see him die without anyone ever knowing what lies beneath it all, go on,” said Cid, firmly. “I just regret it, that’s all.”

“Regret _what_ , Garlond?”

“I regret that I couldn’t stop whatever it was that happened to you back then, that turned you into this tireless mouth on legs that runs away any time something gets too close to its heart. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Ah.”

The disquieting silence returned for them to share, as the wax-paper window warmed towards red. Alpha napped, or at least pretended to.

Then, idly muttered against the side of the pillow: “Rehearsed all of that before coming in here, eh?”

Cid’s face also warmed towards red. “No, Nero. Your boneheaded commentary always brings out the worst in me.”

“You want to know _who_ I am, eh? Well, just your luck, I fully intend to complete my memoirs while I’m stuck here. Even have a name for it.” Nero beheld an invisible marquee: He Kept Reaching For the Moon But Landed in the Cold, Uncaring Vacuum of Space.”

“Oh, how poetic.”

“But alas. The nurse won’t let me have my typewriter.”

“You’ll have to use a pencil.”

“Perish. I need those for the crossword, Garlond.”

They locked eyes, only for a single but attenuated moment; funny how regret had turned into an odd sort of relief somewhere along the way. 

“It is getting dark,” Cid observed. “I suppose I ought to mosey along before the nurses shoo me out. With a shoe.”

“As you do.”

“You bet I do.”

“But before you do, old blue.” Nero gestured broadly to the bedside table, where Cid now noticed the one thing brightening it: A gaily decorated pot of small sunflowers, planted, not cut. Shriveling nevertheless.

“What’s this?” Cid picked a card off a skewer in the dirt. “ _Best wishes, Lord Godbert Manderville and the Gold Saucer staff_ …? Pretty big name.”

“I’ve been in here, what, seven, eight weeks. Eight weeks,” began Nero, closing his eyes. “I have a difficult time counting the first one, I was unconscious the entire time, or perhaps my memory was so fried I’ve forgotten all of it.”

“For the best, don’t you think?”

“I can only imagine. Anyway, when I woke up, he was the first person to visit me.” Nero paused. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“Oh yeah? Your eyes are closed.”

“I can feel your goggled bewilderment from here. _What? Nero Scaeva knows people who aren’t me?_ I am, after all, a freelance engineer and very in-demand at that. The last project I finished for him before coming to help you lot was to implement a new wireless communications system for his staff,” he explained. “But we’ve worked together before. I even designed a few gadgets for sale in the prize exchange. Toys and dolls to take home for the kiddies, that sort of thing.”

“That’s what you’ve done, not who you are.”

Nero shrugged it off. “That’s not what I was getting at. Anyway, Lord Manderville brought me those sunflowers, but this awful room, Garlond. It hardly gets any light.”

“Ought to take that paper off the window, then.”

“Nurses say it’ll let flies in. I suppose I’d rather strain my eyes than suffer swarms of Ala Mhigan gnats, who no doubt hate us Garleans as much as the other locals.”

“Fair enough.”

“I would ask a favor of you,” Nero said, yawning pointedly; afternoon prescriptions made for short evenings. “Please take that darling pot with you and settle the flowers in the sun, perhaps in the back courtyard of the workshop where Biggs goes to bum cigarettes off Rowena’s girls and Wedge goes to flirt and make an ass of himself.”

Cid took the request into his hands, easing its gentle heft and himself towards the doorway. “Is that all?”

“Mm. That’s all they need. A little sunshine, a little warmth ought to perk those right up. The birds like the seeds, so much that they plant new ones wherever they go.” Unexpectedly, Nero turned his head back towards his oldest and dearest friend, his eyes wide, bright. “Those flowers will die eventually, of course. The winter always comes to make sure of it. But see it through and you’ll have a lovely garden there again, in the spring.”

“In the spring.”

Nero nestled back into the familiar folds and rumples of his hospital bed, a plot shaped like him. “Yes, Garlond. The blimmin’ spring. Don’t make me tell you thrice.”


End file.
